Newcomers: Book Three - by Lojze Kovacic (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An extraordinary novel tracing the first years of communist Yugoslavia

"Newcomers is a novel of grand and appalling power. It is a human-smelling work, slick with sweat, trembling with appetite. And deeply sad in its loneliness and privation, too. It wounds us in the way our own memories do. It is a marvelous and humane feat of clarity and consolidation." --Dustin Illingworth, The Nation

The third and final volume of Lojze Kovačič's Newcomers finds Bubi in Ljubljana anxiously awaiting the end of the Second World War. Will the new regime identify his German speaking family as enemies of the state? Kovačič describes this chaotic new era in a flood of visionary language. From early voting systems (where a voter threw a rubber ball into one of two urns) to show trials, homelessness in freezing Ljubljana winter to the warm buzz of newspaper offices, youth brigades building the railroad to a state-run textile mill--life surges through a people lacerated by war. And all the time Bubi develops his ideas about art and the new communist society. He comes to feel that friendship means "mutual assistance, freedom . . . admitting your own weaknesses, shared resistance against fulfilling norms . . ." His story, in this final volume, is spurred on by an effort to live up to those ideals.
Again and again, the details in this novel inspire awe. With a few fresh words, Kovačič conjures a face, a hillside, a sickbed, or a jail cell. Michael Biggins has a rare ear for the intricacies of the English language. His translation shivers with all the passion, shame, and tenderness of the original.

About the Author

Lojze Kovačič (1928-2004) was born in Basel to a German mother and Slovenian father. In 1938 the family was exiled to Slovenia, where Kovačič lived until his death. Considered to be one of Slovenia's most significant authors of the 20th century, his works often relate to his own life and are constantly concerned with existential topics like life and death, displacement and exile, dream and reality. He has been compared to great Central European writers such as Danilo Kis, Sandor Marai, Imre Kertész and Ismail Kadaré. His work, which has now been rediscovered in several countries, consists of ten novels, novellas, essays and children's books.

Translator bio:

Michael Biggins has translated over fifteen book-length literary works from Slovenian, including the novels of Drago Jančar, collections of poetry by Tomaz Salamun, the Holocaust memoir Necropolis by Triestine Slovenian author Boris Pahor, and Slovenia's all-time best-selling novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol. In 2015 he was awarded the Janko Lavrin Diploma of the Society of Slovene Literary Translators for distinguished contributions to Slovene literature abroad. He lives in Seattle, where he curates the Slavic and East European library collections at the University of Washington and teaches in the University's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.